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19 January 2012

Open Source Urbanism – The Hacking City

There exist various different notions of
Open Source Urbanism and in recent years various – sometimes crucially
different - approaches to conceptualise phenomena in the contemporary
metropolis have been developed under this terminology. Saskia Sassen’s talk on Talking
back to your Intelligent City at the BMWLab last summer was recently put
online and has been inspiring this post.

I first came across the term of Open Source
Urbanism through following the work of Urban
Catalyst, a Berlin-based research and consultant group. In their article in
the architecture magazine Arch+ dating back to the year 2007 entitled ‘Open
Source Urbanismus: vom Inselurbanism zur Urbanität der Zwischenräume’ they explored the principle of
open-source analogous to the development of computer software. Targeting
alterations in urban policy, Urban Catalyst’s planning concept proposes to
encompass a multiplicity of actors with diverse backgrounds to participate in
the planning process. Open Source
is therefore used as the metaphor for manifold ideas that should get involved
in working towards a more socially sustainable approach in urban governance and
planning. Also the concept of considering the urban landscape as a
“palmipsest”, where new layers do not obscure all traces of their predecessors
would maintain a particular sense of place, that is often lacking in
contemporary planning. According to Urban Catalyst it is very
important to allow for modifications and ameliorations during this process.
This may also result in altering the initial planning goal. The issue of
participation and taping the resources inherent to the urban human fabric by
far is not a new concept, although urban policy makers have been advertising
this approach extensively the last decade. Urban Catalyst further suggest to
hack the city through modes of meanwhile uses and use the existing
infrastructures as sources for urban change. In fact, I would argue that this
definition of Open Source Urbanism dates back to the Situationist city of
Unitary Urbanism, where urban dynamics would no longer be driven by bureaucracy
and capitalism but by participation. Adaptability and the flux, favouring
process over goal, as well as participation are ideals that are vital for this
way of urbanism. Nevertheless the concept is not new, these topics are still
highly topical in contemporary urban discourses.

The connection of Open Source Urbanism and the Situationsts have
also been explored by more technologically
driven approaches, that I will not go deeper into herein. What will
probably be the most influential debate on this terminology would be Saskia
Sassen’s. She understands Open Source Urbanism as a type in which the city
‘talks back’. The city can also be understood as an assemblage of myriad
interventions and little changes from the ground up (urban protests like the
Stuttgart). The power lies not so much in each single one of those
interventions, but more in the assemblage of those. Together they add meaning
to the incompleteness of the city and the city talks back in a dynamic manner.
And this very incompleteness, according to Sassen, is the power of the city,
something which cannot be achieved by planning the technological intelligent
city like Songdo
or Masdar. With her
understanding of Urban Source Urbanism Sassen combines the understanding of
Urban Catalysts approach that what should be strengthened is that the city is
constituted by the existing materials and the existing human fabric with the
technological approach towards urban Source. She understands the city not only
as consisting of hardware – like the Intelligent City – but also as the
software of people’s practices. Intelligent cities are closed systems who will
become obsolete sooner.

Sassen draws on the example of New York’s Riverside Park, which
developed from a no-go area to being a park for all those who wanted to use it,
partly because dog-owners started to walk their dogs in large numbers. Dog
keeping was a reaction of feeling insecure in the neighbourhood. And the city
talked back: get a dog, of course you need to walk your dog, many others do,
and therefore your recover the territory of the park. Similarly the increasing
amount of farmers’ markets is also an example where the city talks back. It has
not been a top-down decision. It’s a result of various conditions, but
primarily the desire of city resident to have access to fresh produce. What
becomes apparent here is that a thousand individual decisions enabled the
possibility for creating a viable farmers’ market.

Sassen sees in Open Source ‘a DNA that resonates strongly with how
people make the city theirs or urbanize what might be an individual initiative
(…) Recovering the incompleteness of cities means recovering a space where the
work of open sourcing the urban can thrive’.

1 comments:

Nice post! Saskia Sassen's recent talks about smart cities and open source urbanism are a great inspiration to me, as they are to you apparently...

According to me, there is a really important point raised by the open source urbanism approach: it is a collective approach to managing the commons, not a hierarchical or a market-based approach (very individualistic). That is why, I believe, Saskia Sassen talks about the "City as a Hacker", not about "hacking the city"... It is the city as a whole, as a human collective, that is talking back!

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The city is made up of assemblages built of heterogeneous networks and associations. Multiple and overlapping enactments constitute urban life as a synchronous city.SYNCHRONICITY is a blog excavating these networks and setting them in relationship to each other. SYNCHRONICITYunderstands itself as an extended platform sharing myriad approaches in urbanism, landscape and architecture.